Shamanic Ways

17/10/2026

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17/10/2026

❣️☘️❣️ The Midmar Recumbent Stone Circle, Aberdeenshire. This photo shows the recumbent stone and two adjacent uprights.

17/10/2026

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There is a cross hanging over a door or in the rafters of a great many Irish houses, made of rushes pulled from a field, and it is almost certainly older than Christianity in Ireland. ✝️ Brigid's cross.

The story told about it is this. Brigid was called to the deathbed of a dying chieftain, in some versions her own father, who was raving and would not be settled. She sat beside him and, to occupy her hands or to calm him, began picking rushes from the floor and weaving them. He asked what she was making, and as she explained the cross she was weaving she also explained what it meant, and he grew quiet, listened, and was baptised before he died. The crosses are made new every year on the eve of Saint Brigid's Day, the thirty-first of January, which is also Imbolc, the old festival marking the beginning of spring and the start of the lambing season. Rushes are pulled rather than cut, brought into the house, and woven into the distinctive four-armed cross with the woven square centre, though there are three-armed and multi-armed regional variants too. The new cross is blessed and hung over the door, over the hearth or in the rafters of the byre to protect the house, the family and the animals from fire, illness and harm for the year ahead. The old one is often left in place, which is why in some old houses you will find a layer of them in the thatch going back decades. And the thing underneath all of it is that Brigid the saint and Brigid the goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann share a name, a feast day and a great many attributes, and nobody in Ireland ever felt the need to resolve that.

Pulled from a field, hung over a door, renewed every year. 💚 A living Irish tradition, the Saint Brigid's cross woven from rushes on the eve of the first of February, the old festival of Imbolc, and hung to protect the house for the year ahead.

17/10/2026

❣️☘️❣️ A beautiful wee stone circle hidden in a forest in Scotland…a few photos of Glassel Stone Circle near Banchory in Aberdeenshire. Walk through the forest, across these moss covered mounds and between the trees to find this site which has stood here for thousands of years. Very atmospheric in this quiet and beautiful setting.

17/10/2026

❣️☘️❣️ This is the Walking Oak on Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, known locally as the Groot Tree, the Ent Tree, or just the Old Man of the Woods.

It stands in Brocton Coppice, which holds one of the largest concentrations of ancient and veteran oaks in the county, survivors of the forest that once covered the whole of the Chase. Age estimates vary wildly, from around 500 years to well over a thousand.

Local tradition says it inspired Treebeard. Tolkien was stationed at Rugeley and Brocton camps during the First World War, and walked down through Brocton Coppice to visit Edith at Great Haywood after their marriage in 1916. He began writing the Book of Lost Tales there while convalescing from trench fever. Whether any particular tree gave him the Ents is another matter, but he certainly passed these ones.

The exact location is kept quiet to protect the roots from the footfall. If you go looking, stay on the marked paths.

14/09/2026

❣️☘️❣️ This sounds wonderful !!

31/08/2026

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🌙🧚🌙

30/08/2026

❣️☘️❣️ There is an island off the west coast of Scotland, three miles long, where the kings of a nation were carried to be buried for four hundred years.

Iona. Columba came from Ireland and founded a monastery there in the year five sixty three, and from that small green island Christianity spread through Dal Riata, into Pictland, and eventually across much of northern Britain. The monks of Iona were extraordinary scholars and artists. The Book of Kells, one of the most beautiful objects made anywhere in medieval Europe, is now thought to have been begun on this island before being taken to Ireland ahead of Viking raids.

But the part that catches people is the burial ground. It is called the Reilig Odhrain, and Scottish tradition holds that dozens of early kings of Scotland were brought here and laid down, along with kings of Ireland and of Norway. Whatever the exact count, the fact that it was believed is the point. If you were a king of Scots, you were taken across open water to a tiny Hebridean island to be buried, because that was where the ground was holiest. 🕊️

Alongside them lie the West Highland grave slabs, and these are what stop you in your tracks. Carved between the thirteen and sixteen hundreds, they show warriors in quilted armour with two handed swords, galleys under sail, hunting scenes, and dense interlace running round the borders. They belong to the chiefs and captains of the great Hebridean families, the MacLeans, MacDonalds, MacLeods, MacKinnons, MacQuarries. Generations of them were shipped to Iona to be buried among kings.

The monastery was sacked repeatedly by Norse raiders and eventually dissolved, and the buildings fell. In the twentieth century a Glasgow minister brought unemployed shipyard workers and young ministers to the island and they rebuilt the abbey together by hand, which is about as Scottish a resurrection as you could design.

It is still there, still working, still receiving people who come across the sound for reasons they find hard to explain.

Some ground never stops being ours. 🤍

17/07/2026

☘️❣️☘️ Bit of fun ....I'm Iris Lace of Thistle 🤭 lol
How about you?

05/06/2026

❣️🌴❣️MAKIA: Goddess of Energy .... focus you fire ...direct your energy ...create your world www.hunahawaii.com